John McCririck, who is suing Channel 4 for £3m in damages over the loss of his job as the station's betting-ring reporter, said on Tuesday that he is now "unemployable" and that adjusting to life without regular television work has been "very hard".

"You lose your purpose," McCririck said. "I've worked all my life. I've never missed a day's work in my life, I've never been late for a job in my life, you live to work. I've become a Jeremy Kyle addict."

McCririck was speaking at the end of a preliminary hearing into his case against Channel 4, which alleges that the station was motivated by ageism when it dispensed with his services at the end of 2012. Justice Anthony Snelson has reserved judgment on whether the case should move to a full employment tribunal this year and is not expecting to deliver his ruling for several weeks.

"It is the same with hundreds of thousands of people who suddenly lose their jobs," McCririck said. "I'm now unemployable.

"People are saying to me, if you had your way, you'd go on until you're 90 or 100, [but] it is the ability to do the job. They have brought no one in who can do the job better than I can.

"It's been really stressful, it takes it out of you. I'm not doing any work now. I do odd little bits and pieces but there's no work coming in."

McCririck is claiming £500,000 from Channel 4 for loss of future earnings and £2.5m as a "whopping, punitive punishment" for age discrimination. "It's the only ambition I've got in life," he said, "to make a mark for anyone who fears for their job, [it is] the scourge of our society among older people."

Earlier in the day the hearing heard that Channel 4 had made a payment of £20,000 to McCririck following a decision to reduce the number of days he worked for the station each year.

"Kevin Lygo [the senior Channel 4 executive who authorised the payment] expressed to me that we didn't want a dispute with John," Stuart Cosgrove, Channel 4's director of creative diversity, said in evidence to the hearing.

"And we certainly didn't want a dispute spilling out into the press. At no stage did we ever feel threatened by John but what we did fear was that John's relationship with the press is one where his character attracts attention. We didn't want a public fallout with him."

The first runner to emerge from Godolphin's Moulton Paddocks stable in Newmarket since 22 horses at the yard were found to have been doped with anabolic steroids returned as a winner on Tuesday, when Air Of Glory took a maiden event at Lingfield by three-quarters of a length.

The three-year-old is now trained by Saeed bin Suroor, who also oversees Godolphin Stables in the centre of Newmarket, but was formerly in the care of Mahmood al-Zarooni, who has been banned from the sport for eight years for his central role in the doping scandal.

Frankie Dettori, who returned to race-riding last Friday after a six-month ban for using cocaine, drew another blank from his booked rides on Tuesday and will now hope to break his duck for 2013 at Kempton Park on Wednesday evening. The best Dettori could manage on Tuesday was a second-place finish on Ssafa in a race at Yarmouth.